week three

It is my pleasure to introduce Robert! He is doing a ton of the work as well as being the first person that saw the space, I brought him to advise me. He shrugged his shoulders and said "sure, we can do this". Robert makes everything and anything seem possible! He has a solution for everything!

He is the one that has his equipment at Brisbane and he will be moving with us from Brisbane, he is one of the ace family for sure!

the craigs list help

the first 10 days or so was about Demo and finding people to do it. I could not afford to pay for demo and the wood was in great condition. I started looking for people to demo for trade in wood.  Chris Joy (honest) was a great find ! He needed wood to build a book shelf to sell.
Chris took down some major shelving in exchange for the wood, we were both very happy.



this is the monster unit he took down in about 3 hours. It is 12 feet high.

 Chris came back last week and took down the room off the bathrooms... he really like being part of the project. He has a cat.
It is 17 and his girlfriend always thinks it is sick.... at 17 who could sure.

 OK, so I think he is cute, so sue me!

this is JT, I did not get many bites on the big security gate but I did not want to pay someone to take it down and remove it. SO I told JT  he could have it for free, he was super nice but I think the job got the better of him. He cut the legs off leaving stumps  ( I forgot to tell him the rules) and left 2 panels behind. A scrap metal guy took them away for free so it all worked out OK. His dog is 5 and has had a cruciate repair (TPLO) and cancer, but he has good pet insurance.

David got off "peeling stickers off walls duty" and finally got to do some DEMO too (and lots of it) 

the way he went at that stuff with the sledge hammer had me wondering if maybe I'd been a bit too bossy that day!

Tim came aboard in a big way last week (week before maybe) and started prepping walls  for painting. I really wish I had gotten photos of the huge holes in all the walls. No one will ever believe how bad they were. Tim keeps me sane and always has great ideas! Cage sends his good ideas through Tim. We laugh a lot, usually. We swear sometimes too....

Last week we also got  three rooms painted and some carpet laid in my office... I did not get photos of that!!! crap!!
I'm really mad about the carpet layer cause that was my mom's nephew who was visiting from southern ca. and we won't see him again!!

I will recap this week soon.  thanks for all the support in so many ways!

ace is moving

WELCOME to the "Ace is Moving!" new blog!
I'm well into my project so I'm going to have to re-cap details as I go. This is my first blogging experience and I have some reservations about the whole deal. So why do it? I'm on this incredible journey, taking on a project WAY beyond my expertise or experience and I want to share it. I also want all the incredible students at ACE to be involved and as excited about our new home as I am!! It is YOU who inspired me to reach outside of the box.... and here I am.... way, way, way outside of the box.....

I signed the lease on Sept 13th. When I did I asked the real estate agent if he had any leases take this long..

 "Not many" he said.... "first time we spoke you were on your way to Tahoe for the July 4th holiday". Guess it did take a long time to get it signed. This is Peter Cliff, the agent, he and his brother Dan were wonderful to work with. Kathy McNamara's husband Dick spent hours and hours going over the lease with me.... 43 pages of single spaces legal sized paper, not for babies!!! and I know every BIT of it thanks to Dick!! He was a big part of getting this deal DONE!!

This is what it looked like when I got the key, these are pallet racks. My mom said not to take the place with all of them still in there but I had an idea for them!

  I don't consider the lease signing day one, that would be Sat SEPT 10th when I was having coffee with my friends from Tahoe, Nanci and Rick and we decided lease or not, lets take down some friggin' walls! Thats what can happen when you give some one the key before they sign the lease.

This is my friend Rick who worked super hard all day, we took down several walls and I was totally encouraged by what could be accomplished in a day!

 I took it all a step farther when I started selling pallet racks on craigs list. I had 1300 bucks in pocket, sore arms from slinging a sledge hammer but still no lease. I wondered if I could go to jail, decided not and kept on going. This is Jonathan, skinny kid from Santa Rosa,  he worked like a dog all day taking them all down.

Originally I had gotten an estimate to PAY to have them taken away! 

This is my office (mom will be in there too) it was last originally occupied by the late Bill Graham. This is David scraping stage hand passes for the Stones and Madonna and Snoop Dog off the wall
(NO! we did not keep any of them!)





this is the end for week one, I will catch you up to last week soon then try for daily stuff as some of the key players have not been introduced yet!!